


March On

by racheesi



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Barbecue Crashing, F/M, Holster Likes Having a Real Life RomCom to Watch, March and April are the Pinterest Moms of the Volleyball House, Party Crashing, Ransom is a Nervous Wreck When He Gets the Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 11:37:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6752425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/racheesi/pseuds/racheesi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ransom is enamored with a long-legged, trivia-hating, crafternooning volleyball player with big green eyes and a deadpan sense of humor. Only he has to figure out how to woo her while he's face-down in her yard with a giant rip in his shorts during a volleyball barbecue. After they've already hooked up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	March On

**Author's Note:**

> I really, really wanted some Ransom/March fic because March is such a cutie! I own none of the characters. Everything is from Ngozi's amazing webcomic, Check Please! Check it out it's AMAZING! Special, mega, huge thanks to my angel, tumblr user bshittyknights for talking through these fic ideas with me!

It started out with an ill-advised attempt at crashing a lacrosse party.

Actually, no. It started out at Epikegster.

After hanging with Kent Parson ( _wow_ , he was a pretty cool bro), Holster steered Ransom toward a small group of volleyball girls that had showed up (probably to keep an eye on Chowder and his lady, given the way they kept glancing toward the Frog in question). Parson’s presence broke the ice, Ransom’s finely-honed charmer smile took over, and the conversation was off and running. By the end of the night, Holster was headed to the volleyball house with April and Ransom was headed upstairs with March. The conversation was outstanding, the sex even better, and she headed out not long after Holster returned, leaving her number tacked onto the cork board in neat print with a smiley face under Ransom’s name.

He meant to call her. He did. But Ransom didn’t exactly have a lot of experience wooing past a hookup and he was as surprised as he could be to realize (it took him until late December to even put it together with no small amount of help from Holster) he was pretty damn into her. Upon that realization, figuring it was too late to call her and actually sound like… decent, he did the next best thing; Facebook, Instagram, and not-so-subtly demanding any information Chowder could provide (“You have an in with the volleyball team, bro. Tell me _everything_.”)

Just before the spring semester started, Holster bugged him until he started up a Facebook conversation with March, claiming he had lost her number in post-kegster clean-up. The best thing about social media was that he could type his responses to March and make sure they didn’t sound creepy, desperate, or the thousand other things he worried about. The worst thing about social media was that he could type his responses to March so that he could read them and overthink and assume they were creepy, desperate, or a thousand other things to worry about. But all in all, it wasn’t bad. Ransom had a feeling he was starting to drive Holster up the wall, but most of the time his best friend and fellow D-man treated it like his own personal romantic comedy to witness.

In January, walking into the dining hall with Bitty, Chowder, Holster, and Shitty, he spotted the women’s volleyball team. Chowder waved wildly at Farmer and the whole table looked at them. He locked eyes with March and smiled (too wide? not wide enough?) and waved (had his hand _always_ been shaped like that?). Holster snorted beside him and he felt the back of his neck heat up. He elbowed Holster in the ribs, but his shoulders relaxed and his grin widened when March _waved back_.

—

Cut to the weekend after Spring Break. The season was gearing up toward its end, and Ransom only got _more_ busy, but he always took time out of his day to keep up his long-running Facebook message with March. The weather had finally climbed to just above 50º and the campus was treating it like the first day of spring. Tee shirts, flip flops, frisbee, and most importantly, parties. He was in a rare, impatient mood, ready to go out, but Jack was in playoff-stress mode and even Ransom knew better than to suggest a kegster.

And then he got the brilliant idea to crash the lacrosse party across the street. Free food, free beer, and maybe, if the evening went right, he could piss in their yard or something.

He had just finished his first beer when he saw the flashing lights outside. He should have figured that the cops would be out to bust underage drinkers on the first nice weekend of the season. Did they have no sense of fun? Given the amount of uneasy chatter, there weren’t that many people _over_ 21 on the premises and Ransom realized. If any of the lax bros recognized him, those assholes would probably tell the officers that _he_ had supplied the beer. Shit.

He pushed his way to the back of the house and slid open the door. The chain-link fence wasn’t all that tall, so he slid off his sandals, took off at a run and hopped the fence, then through the next yard, then the next fence. A few errant thoughts ran through his mind. First, Jack would be proud at his cardio skills. Second, he should probably have weighed the consequences against any of the other houses seeing a black man booking it through their yard. Even in Massachusetts, in an open-minded campus like Samwell, shit still happened. Third, he was fucking impressed at the yard-upkeep in the neighborhood. His feet barely hurt and there wasn’t any gravel… yet. He picked up speed as he neared a taller, wooden post fence. Even at his height, it would be a stretch. He braced a hand on it to launch himself over, but he felt a tug, heard a ripping noise, and then the ground was rising rapidly to meet him.

‘This grass is really soft,’  he thought to himself as he was facedown in yard number… six? The thought was quickly followed up by the realization that his shorts were very, _very_ ripped at the seat. And, as if his dignity could not suffer any more, he heard a giggle, a throat clearing, and then—

“ _Ransom_?”

He lifted his head and blinked a few times before pushing up onto his forearms and taking in the _entire Samwell University Women’s Volleyball Team._ Having a fucking _barbecue_. April and another woman were at a propane grill, flipping burgers and turning hot dogs. Farmer was perched on a stool, pouring out glasses of wines, and March. March was leaning against a picnic table, arms crossed, and lips quirked in amusement.

He cleared his throat and gave his widest, most charming smile, despite his face heating enough that he was sure his eyebrows would catch fire. “Uh… Happy Saturday, ladies! Surprise yard inspection. Congratulations. You pass with flying colors.”

March snorted and pushed off the table, long, lean legs, tanned against her white shorts and- oh god, Ransom was _fucked_. Ransom took her offered hand to pull himself up, brushing himself off and trying to discretely determine the damage caused to the ass of his favorite salmon shorts (Holster was going to be _so thrilled_ about that, wasn’t he?). Farmer appeared at his side with a bottle of water and he opened it, still catching his breath as he leaned into March.

“You want a burger?” she asked, still chuckling to herself as she brushed some grass from his shoulders, giving him a look-over that made him warm from the inside out.

He nodded, downing half the water in one breath. His heart rate was slowing to normal and he was starting to relax until March spoke up again.

“I’ve got to get you out of those shorts.” He choked and water went spraying everywhere, causing the entire yard to turn back to him again. March chuckled, eyes glinting. “So I can sew them, Oluransi.”

“You’re _incredible_ ,” Ransom breathed out a laugh before nodding. Her cheeks pinked and she beckoned him to follow her into the house. He figured it didn’t matter how many of her teammates saw the rip in his pants. It wasn’t like he could make more of a fool of himself, and March didn’t seem to mind. He stepped over an immaculate welcome mat, past a clear sliding door onto shiny kitchen linoleum and he looked around in shock.

“It’s so _clean_ ,” he breathed. After two years in the Haus, it was hard to imagine any collegiate home looking this nice. “It’s like something from Pinterest, shit. Should I take off my shoes or something? … Oh.” He looked down at his bare feet, flip flops abandoned at the lacrosse house.

March headed upstairs into an equally neat room behind a ‘March & April’ door. “Shorts off, hot sauce,” she said, pulling a box labeled ‘Crafternoon!’ down from her closet shelf.

Ransom obeyed without question, because he wasn’t an idiot. When a beautiful woman tells you to take off your shorts, you take off your damn shorts. He shucked them in record time, kicking them off with a distinct lack of grace that was directly proportional to watching March bend over to fish a needle and thread from her box. He was glad he pulled his nicer boxer-briefs from the ‘D-Man Laundry Mountain’ before heading to the lacrosse party. He fetched the shorts and held them out to March, but she turned around, green eyes sweeping up him starting at his feet and working up. She took the shorts and folded them neatly on her nightstand, carefully laying the needle and thread on top.

“I think,” she started carefully. “That the shorts and the burger can wait for a bit.” She stepped forward and reached out, fingers of one hand brushing the hem of his shirt, while the other took off his hat.

“I want to take you out to dinner,” Ransom blurted, before pausing. Then nodding. “I mean. You know. Not today. Because those burgers smell really good.”

March raised her eyebrows, lips curling up in a way that made Ransom want to keep rambling and shut up all at the same time. She nodded once, before her hand curled around his neck and saved him the decision by pulling him down to her in a searing kiss.

Okay, so maybe crashing the lacrosse party wasn’t the _worst_ idea he’d ever had.


End file.
